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1. Green Mayors Compete for Cleantech as They Join on Climate Change
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2. Honeywell and Ensyn Form JV for Bio-Oil
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3. Bay Area Mayors to Outline Plan of Attack on Climate Change
Green Mayors Compete for Cleantech as They Join on Climate Change
Katie Fehrenbacher - Policy
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed have been battling it out to make their neighboring cities greener than the other’s — every week it seems the Mayors have a new announcement of how they have added green jobs and coaxed a hot cleantech startup to set up shop in their locale. At the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s Clean and Green conference where Newsom and Reed met to discuss a regional partnership to fight climate change, they openly discussed the municipal competition, calling it healthy to spur the growing industry.
Newsom said he’s actively watching San Jose’s green moves, “casing their joints,” and checking out the green info on its web site. High-profile green cities are all borrowing each other’s ideas, noted Newsom, pointing out that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has created a similar green taxi program and called for urban wind — just like San Francisco has previously done. San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed had similar comments: “We are a little bit competing to be greenest, but it is good to have competition.”
Honeywell and Ensyn Form JV for Bio-Oil
Craig Rubens - Big Green
It’s not clear which startups will emerge from the so-called biofuel bubble, but in the wake of the food vs. fuel debate, bigger players are trying their hands at bio-based fuels. UOP, a subsidiary of conglomerate Honeywell, announced today that it has signed a letter of intent with bio-oil veteran Ensyn to form a joint venture to produce second generation biofuels for power generation, heating and eventually transportation. Financial details of the JV were not disclosed, and the parties expect to finalize the details of the venture later this year within the next three years.
The main focus of the joint venture is to crack the transport fuel market. UOP launched its Renewable Energy & Chemicals business in 2006 and has developed its Eni Ecofining process to produce renewable diesel and jet fuels. Ensyn brings to the table its Rapid Thermal Processing technology, which converts second generation biomass like forest and agricultural wastes to bio-oil in a flash using “a tornado of hot sand.” Seconds after being heated up to 500ยบ C for pyrolysis, the process yields pourable, liquid fuel. Currently, this fuel is relatively low-grade and is used as home heating oil, but through this partnership, the companies hope to refine the process to make high-quality greener alternatives to gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
We’ve seen similar joint ventures come from large, multinational companies like Monsanto, Dupont and General Motors, all of whom are working to take the lab bench successes of biofuel startups and scale them.
Founded in 1984 and headquartered in Toronto, Ensyn operates seven commercial biomass processing plants in the U.S. and Canada. The company makes a variety of bio-based chemicals including home-heating fuels, pharmaceuticals, food additives and adhesives.
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Bay Area Mayors to Outline Plan of Attack on Climate Change
Katie Fehrenbacher - Energy
On Wednesday morning, Bay Area mayors — Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, Chuck Reed of San Jose and Ron Dellums of Oakland — will meet to discuss how to create “a regional climate compact” at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s Clean and Green conference. The group plans to outline efforts to create measurable goals to meet green house reduction standards, and specifically how California can meet the goals of AB 32, which calls for a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
Other Bay Area leaders, like Attorney General Jerry Brown, former Congressman Tom Campbell, Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, Bill Watkins of Seagate, Tom Werner of SunPower and Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures, plan to attend the conference. The goals of the day are to start dialogues on ways to increase public transportation and electric vehicles, establish standards for green building and rooftop solar, and find ways to promote clean power and green jobs. We’ll be adding our coverage throughout the day, so check back here for more.
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